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Feral/Drought
Prologue Ruby had lived in the same Twoleg nest for her whole life. She and her brother Snowy had been born there, their mother had died there, and it was a comfortable homey place. Sometimes at night she and Snowy would listen to the caterwauling of the wildcats who lived beyond the fence and they would tell each other how grateful they were to be inside in the warm and the light. There came a day when Ruby and Snowy moved away from that familiar Twoleg nest, and their Twoleg pets came with them. They travelled a long way in small tight containers and it was very irregular. Their cages were put beside each other, and Ruby was glad of that, because when the lights went off in the place that their cages were in she could mew to her brother through the slits in the side. After a very long and confusing journey with a lot of bouncing, shuddering and terrible noise they arrived at their new Twoleg nest. The surroundings were different - they were hardly green at all - and strange unfamiliar smells filled the air. At night Ruby and Snowy heard the sounds of munching and thudding and sometimes they would hear strange barking in the distance. Once or twice they thought they heard a cat yowling. There were lots of spiders in this new nest - huge ones far bigger than any they had ever seen before. Snowy liked to chase them through the house, dabbing a paw out to poke them and then watching them run. Ruby stayed away from the spiders - they were too big and brown and hairy and she hated them. Snowy chased the smaller ones too, brown ones with white stripes and black ones with red tails. He grabbed one of the black-and-red ones in his mouth once, and it bit him on the tongue. It hurt, he said, and he spat the spider out and squashed it with his paw. The next day Snowy's tongue was swollen and hanging out of his mouth, and he yelped when Ruby touched her nose to it. He started dribbling a lot and he didn't feel like eating or drinking. The day after that his whole muzzle was swollen and hot to touch - and his pads were hot too, when Ruby felt them. He lay in the sun all day panting hard, because he was thirsty but his tongue hurt too much for him to lap at the water bowl. Their Twoleg pets noticed that something was wrong that day, and they scooped Snowy up with yowls of distress and carried him away in their big monster. Ruby watched him go from the window. His blue eyes found her green ones and he blinked at her encouragingly. She knew that blink was saying to not give up, he'd see her again soon. She blinked back at him, lifted her chin and tried to be brave. Snowy never came back in the Twoleg monster. Chapter One Ruby knew it now. There were wildcats in this strange new place too. She had been patrolling the garden last night, amusing herself by chasing the little lizards which lived in the cracks of the garden path. Then she had heard it. A gutteral cough and a thud followed by a yowl - the yowl of a cat in pain. Snowy! she thought instantly. Her brother had been missing for four days and everytime her Twolegs went anywhere in their monster she still dashed outside on their return to search for his white pelt. She had dashed up the garden and bounded over the fence before she really realised what she was going, and then she froze, scared and alone in the dark of the night. Leaves rustled and sticks cracked beneath her paws. It's too quiet, Ruby thought nervously, and then a bird screeched above her head and she yowled and dashed forward in the darkness. She ran in a blind panic until her pads ached, but she couldn't manage to stop - and then her head hit the trunk of a tree, hard. She fell backwards and lay on the ground in a daze, feeling her sense of the world slip away from her. "Is it awake?" someone asked. Ruby squinted at the figure standing over her; blue eyes stared into her own. Snowy! she thought, and she almost called his name, but then the cat blocking out the sun shifted backwards a little bit and she saw the brown fur which framed those eyes. The disappointment she felt was almost tangible and she groaned with the weight of it. "Hear that?" the brown tom asked excitedly, leaning in again. His eyes swum in and out of focus and Ruby's head hurt. "She made a noise! She must be alive! What do we do with her, Deviltuft?" Deviltuft? Ruby wondered. And then, Alive? She remembered hitting her head awfully hard - it was good to know that she was still on the mortal plane. Although maybe if she was dead it really would be Snowy standing over her and not this strange tom. A new cat bent close to her. "Can you speak?" she asked. "Do you know our tongue?" Of course I do, Ruby thought, but her lips and tongue wouldn't work to make her speak. They felt thick and dry and heavy. "She needs water, Bandicootpaw," the she-cat decided. "Help me get her back to camp." Bandicootpaw? Ruby thought wryly. What kind of name is that? Who are these cats? "But what about the border patrol?" Bandicootpaw protested. "We can finish it later," the older cat responded. "After all, GumClan aren't exactly much of a threat right now." Ruby felt teeth meeting in the scruff of her neck. Ow! A harsh scent hit her nostrils and she twisted her head sharply to try and get away from it, but the movement only brought more pain flooding to the bump on her skull. These cats reek, she decided. She had smelt this unfamiliar tangy scent before, but from a distance. Up close it was overpowering. I don't want to go with these stinky cats! She wriggled again and the teeth clamped in the loose skin on her neck tightened. She felt her body sliding over loose leaves, dust clinging to her fur. My pelt's going to look as brown as Bandicootpaw's fur does by the time they're finished with me. The journey to their 'camp' didn't take long. Ruby let her head hand back and relaxed after a while. Occasionally she would slit open her eyelids and peek up at the sky. Most of it was covered by the strange green-but-not-green leaves of the trees, but the little sky she could see was bright blue and cloudless. Occasional darts of sunlight streaked through the elongated tree leaves and dyed the ground a strange mottled grey-green.